For St. Louis, Great Expectations but a Slow-Rolling Renaissance
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Recently the New York Times ran a story called, “For St. Louis, Great Expectations but a Slow-Rolling Renaissance.” Naturally, I have some opinions.
ST. LOUIS, April 5 – People here joke that the sidewalks get rolled up at night as workers flee to the suburbs, but through the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament that ended on Monday, the sidewalks got washed instead. St. Louis primped and spruced and papered its empty buildings with signs about the rosy days to come and got its television close-up in front of millions of viewers around the world.
The same can be said for many US cities both bigger and smaller. At least we have sidewalks to roll up or wash – most newer suburbs are not even remotely walkable anytime of the day.
But much of the city’s upbeat message was intended for consumption at home, where urban pioneers like John and Mary Kelly have staked their fortunes on making the renaissance real. The couple opened Kelly’s Deli four years ago on what was then a nearly abandoned block of downtown, and they still have great expectations because of the conversion of vacant buildings into loft-style apartments in their neighborhood and the escalating real-estate prices that are drawing investors.
I’ve seen Kelly’s Deli a number of times when I am downtown but they are never open when I am there. Their hours are 7am to 2pm Monday through Friday according to Sauce Magazine. But Sauce also says Kelly’s is located on the Landing but at 1104 Locust it is a good 10-12 blocks from the Landing.
But for St. Louis, which lost half its population in the decades after World War II, and for the Kellys, the good times still remain mostly unrealized. The basketball crowds gave a nice jolt to the cash register, they said. And the event put as much as $60 million into the local economy over four days of revelry, economic development officials said. But by Tuesday it was business as usual.
“I don’t know how long we can hold on,” Mr. Kelly said.
Suggestion Mr. Kelly, try being open more than 35 hours per week. Try being open on the first Friday of the month when hundreds of people are walking the sidewalks going from gallery to store. UMA around the corner from you in the same building gets many visitors on these Friday nights. Please don’t blame St. Louis because the week day morning and lunch crowd isn’t enough to cover your overhead.
The calculus of rehabilitating any wounded city is partly about experimenting until something that works is found. St. Louis is pinning its hopes on architecture, specifically its stock of glorious old buildings that now stand like monuments to a vanished economy of manufacturing might. But selling the portrait of that recovery, city officials and development leaders say, is complicated by history and myth and the deep divisions in Missouri politics, and to a certain extent by the even trickier terrain of sexual orientation.
Trickier terrain of sexual orientation? This should be good…
The city is an island of Democratic voters in a sea of increasingly conservative rural and suburban ones. It suffers from a reputation as a dangerous place, which tends to keep many outsiders from venturing in. And the recovery effort has partly been led by members of a group that is not popular in many parts of Missouri: gay men and lesbians who have renovated neighborhoods and opened new businesses in recent years.
In August, voters across the state overwhelming voted yes on an amendment to the State Constitution banning same-sex marriage. St. Louis, in a lonely dissent, voted no.
St. Louis does suffer from many negative perceptions which, in my view, are largely outdated or just false. I’ve lived in North St. Louis and never been shot or even shot at. With very few exceptions, I’ve parked on the street for nearly 15 years and my car has never been stolen. Granted, a few of my cars I would have had to pay someone to take.
Gays & Lesbians are an important part of revitalizing St. Louis and similar cites. A good source for information on this is Richard Florida’s Creative Class.
The city’s population, which was more than 850,000 in 1950, had fallen to 348,000 people by 2000, with many of those who left now living in the city’s ring of suburbs.
I am so over seeing these numbers. Out of context they mean very little. In 1950 St. Louis had substantial overcrowding. Basements and attics were poorly converted to living spaces to accommodate all the people. We either had to build up or out. Unfortunately, we chose to build out into the beautiful rolling hills of St. Louis County. Along the way we razed much of our area for highways, “open space”, housing projects and wider streets. All this past urban renewal forced out a good many of these people. With all the land devoted to highways, ever larger hospital complexes and universities we’d have to build much higher today than we would have in 1950. We don’t need 850,000 people again to be a rich, vibrant city. I’m targeting 700,000 eventually with a 500,000 in the next 20 years.
– Steve
